A Roast in The Sun of Camberwell

Rarely do I venture South of the River, particularly on a Sunday when the usually slow train service often just stops. But last Sunday, I headed for Loughborough Junction in the name of a friend's birthday pub roast in The Sun of Camberwell on Coldharbour Lane.

It was my first pub roast of the season but the the beer garden was still flooded with sunshine, warming the drinkers and provoking a party atmosphere.

Wacky yellow

Inside, The Sun has lots of character too: the walls are covered with obscure collections: old snooker cues cases line one wall while another had framed shirt collars nailed to it. The wacky ladies loo had an assortment of old monochrome portraits, all sporting silly expressions cobbled on the yellow walls.

I kicked things off with a Bloody Mary which only needed a few more splashes of tabasco and worcester sauce - (I like mine spicy and brown) and then I moved onto a pint of inoffensive Tribute pale ale.

On to the food: I normally avoid roast chicken due to its dry tendency but I was persuaded by the chefs' method of partially poaching the bird in a water bath, then roasting it to make sure it stays moist- and it did. Traditional trimmings of crunchy baby carrots, buttery cabbage and crispy roast spuds were cosied up inside a yorkshire pud, made nicely soggy with the oniony gravy.

For pudding? I squeezed in a deconstructed blackberry and vanilla cheesecake: The bland vanilla could have been punctuated more with the juicy seasonal fruit and the two sticks of what can only be described as sweet uncooked spaghetti were unnecessary.

The pub is a 10 minute stroll from Loughborough Junction station, made interesting with some snazzy architecture flats with yellow perspex balconies. If you're based in this neck of the woods, you are lucky to have this friendly, fun pub as your local and if not, it's worth the trip.

The Sun of Camberwell, 
61-63 Coldharbour Lane, 
London, SE5

  

Spend a Sunday at The Open Air Theatre, Regents Park

The outdoor stage

On Sunday evening, I went with my family to see Jimmy Carr at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park. The outdoor venue was a stop on his Gagging Order tour and I have honestly not laughed that much in a long time. Let's just say the watershed does not exist there and he is a lot less censored than he is on TV!

Jimmy on stage

We got there early and ate our picnic on the grass, which can be a slightly cheaper and more fun option than the BBQ or restaurant they provide.

Our picnic

It's a beautiful place, twinkling with fairly lights. Luckily for us, it was a warm summer's evening - One year we went during one of England's more traditional Augusts and emerged completely soaked and frozen. But there is something seriously magical about being entertained under the stars.

Inside

The theatre is playing host to The Sound of Music until the end of September, you can buy tickets here

My Anti-Gardening Guide

Last week we were all treated to some warm days and nights and Ollie, my boyfriend and I took the opportunity to give his garden a bit of a face lift. Ok, I'll be honest, he did the leg work... planting, potting and sweeping. I'm just not the gardening type - way too many spiders for an arachnophobe, in fact I have lived in a gardenless flat pretty much all my life and the most green fingered I have got is picking the leaves off a basil plant to garnish my pizza with. But I still found pleasure in my own way, so I put together my anti-gardener's guide to sprucing up your outside space.

Wild Strawberry plant

When buying plants...

1. Make sure it is the right time of year for the plant and if it is happy to grow in our cold and wet country. The garden centre stocks up on plants to make it look like a tropical jungle, only for you to find when you take it home to your shady space, the palm tree dies instantly. 

2. Check how long the plant lasts for. We got conned by a chilli plant that only lasts one season. 

3. Buy herbs, they are cheap, smell lovely and make cooking way more fun.

Get some garden furniture so that when its all finished, you can invite some friends round to sit in it. We got this Africa chair in the Habitat sale for £25.

Africa Chair Habitat, blue flowers and blue pot Homebase

Go for a colour scheme. It helps bring the inevitable mish-mash of everything together. See, blue chair, blue-ish flowers, blue pots. We went for blue.

The making of my jar lights

When it gets dark, you still want to be able to see your food/ friend's faces. I collected a few jars, tied some twine around the rim and popped a tea light in and hung them on the fence post. They were so easy to make and now the garden is all nice and twinkly.

Flower pots can be expensive and pretty dull. We found these old enamel flour tins and used them instead. 

Gnomes aren't the only answer to a bit of garden decoration. Ollie had these antlers lying around that we nailed to the fence to add a fun focal above the table. Now we are BBQ ready, we just need to wait for the sun... again.

Spend a Sunday playing Petenque

I found a lovely wooden boxed set of boules in the carboot sale and have been waiting to take a bottle of wine and meet some friends for a game.

We took advantage of Saturday's warm long sunny evening and headed to Hampstead Heath's petanque arena. It's surrounded by trees which make it easy to miss but nice and secluded once you're past the gate and we had the whole area to ourselves. 

For those of you who don't know, petanque isn't a rigorous game, you team up and throw metal boules at a jack, whoever gets closest, wins. A simple enough game to grasp while sipping red wine and chatting and thats why I like it. 

The pit could do with a rake and I blame the twigs for all my perfect throw's sudden diversions!

£2.50 per person. Boule sets available to hire with a deposit. 

Spend a Saturday at Broadway Market

There's nothing like a London market to get you in the weekend frame of mind. Broadway Market is far less touristy and much cheaper than it's big brother Borough. I bought a quarter of my favourite sour dough bread for only £2.

Then we stopped for a lovely coffee and walked down to Market Cafe for some eggs Benedict/Florentine.

On the way back, my pal Adam surprised me with some beautiful deep red peonies! 

Topped off with a people watch and a pint in the Cat and Mutton at the other end.

http://www.broadwaymarket.co.uk/

http://www.catandmutton.com/

http://market-cafe.co.uk/

Spend a Sunday at Beagle, Hoxton

Beagle is tucked under the tunnels below Hoxton station. I first noticed it when dodging all the happy sunny evening drinkers spilling out onto the street when I was running for the train and I made a mental note to go back and see what all the fuss was about. The chosen day was last Sunday lunch.

While we were waiting for our wine I looked around. The place is huge and every effort has been put in to make it feel airy and spacious. Simple, uniformed tables and chairs are surrounded by vast bare brick walls, which might have been too sparce had it not been for how carefully considered the industrial lighting is, creating more intimate spaces and soft, bright focal points.

Beagle has a good looking menu, both in food description and the lovely stamped logo design, infact the whole place is easy on the eye. If restaurants were humans, Beagle would be 6' tall dark and handsome one!

What We Ordered:

Wood pigeon terrine
It looked great on the plate. Terrine isn't really my thing, especially a pigeon one but the bright purple cabbage next to the deep crimson meat made me tuck in.

Grilled asparagus, chive butter and bantam Egg
It's aparagus season, so I always make the most of those juicy stems. The chive butter was delicious, like a less rich hollandaise. A 'bantam' egg, it turns out after looking it up is just a slightly smaller chicken, from Asia but its still a bloody chicken just the egg is half the size. I really don't understand why restaurants feel the need to big up the egg.. 'a hen's egg' and now a 'bantam egg'. What's wrong with a normal egg? Eggs are great as they are, they don't need a fancy introduction.

Octopus, tomatoes and coriander 
Over to my friend's comments on this, not being a huge octopus fan, but they were the most interested in this out of everything. I can vouch the tomatoes were tasty as was the coriander salsa verde.

Chicken with alioli
This dish is lucky the chicken was so tender and tasty, some of the best I've had, especially with a dollop of the subtle smoked alioli* becuase the panzanella (olive, celery, tomoato and bread salad) was soggy and awful. Like the salad you haul along to a picnic, with good intention of being healthy then you decide you'd rather have a sausage and the salad gets forgotten and left out in the sun to warm up.

*Perhaps ask if they bought a new smoke machine becuase the waitress informed us their smoker had been nicked the night before, which is a disaster becuase that alioli really was good.

Almond and prune tart
Comforting, although slightly on the small side. Perhaps I'm being unfair as we were sharing between 3 but I'm sure the next table got a bigger one.

Cheese board
Really good. Perhaps the highlight, although they only had two options and they were miniscule slices. I can't remember what cheese we had but just look at the one on the right and drool.

I think the reason I am going on so much about the interior and design is because the food didn't wow me but I would definitely go back. Beagle is a great place to have a relaxed glass of very good value wine and some cheese, with friends. The staff are friendly and really know their stuff and it has a nice outside seating for when the rain stops.

http://www.beaglelondon.co.uk/

Spend a Sunday at Columbia Road Flower Market

Columbia Road, East London's flower market. Boy oh boy it was packed. I quickly realised, you just have to go with the tide of people, enjoying the atmosphere and inventive chants the stall holders shout to get you in. Not having a garden, flora and fauna goes over my head but I did shuffle away with a couple of bushes of thyme. They will last longer and they smell so much better than supermarket bought herbs.

If you are thinking of turning your patio/garden/balcony into a bit of a jungle, my advice would be get there early, or you will end up like the poor guy in front of me, who was blindly trying to weave through the crowd holding two tropical looking trees. Let's just say he got tutted, a lot.

www.columbiaroad.info/

Spend a Sunday... Light Show

The first time I tried to see the Light Show, my hopes were extinguished by a piece of paper on the door of the gallery informing me it was sold out.

In my disappointed brain, this confirmed it’s brilliance even more and I bought a ticket for the following weekend.

Leo Villareal’s Cylinder II

The exhibition displays artist’s use of artificial light since it became a more popular art form in 1960s. It says it ‘explores how we experience and psychologically respond to illumination and colour’.

Ceal Floyer’s ‘Throw’

I always forget what a good space the Hayward is, as soon as we walked in, we were mesmerised by the darting movements of the 19,600 lights of Leo Villareal’s Cylinder II 19,600. The movement is composed like a musical score, and every movement is unique. Further on was the playfully titled Ceal Floyer’s ‘Throw’ where a splatter of light appears to be thrown on the floor.

Anthony McCall (independant.com)

A room was dedicated to Anthony McCall’s light film Horizontal, You and I, where a video projector and a mist machine beams evolving lines of light. The viewer is encouraged to interact with the beams of light that appear tangible and solid. I missed the Anthony McCall solo exhibition recently so it was good to see this.

Carlos Cruz-Diez’ Chromosaturation (telegraph.com)

The exhibition encourages playful interaction throughout and this feeling was exemplified when we were asked to take our shoes off for Carlos Cruz-Diez’ Chromosaturation. The artist believes ‘colour does not consist of pigment’ and floods 3 rooms with monochorme projections of red, blue and green light. The immersive colour disorientates your perception of the colour of objects and for some reason, just wearing your socks intesifies the strangeness.

Two hours later, we emerged back into day-light, calmly and happily disorientated. ‘Light Show’ - it’s even in the name - wasn’t pretending to be just a an art exhibition, the medium of light stole the show and made it feel like a performance.

See it at The Hayward

Spend a Sunday... Brunch at Pizza East

Inside, taken from their website

Pizza East is a safe option for a pizza and it's a fun place to have a quick meal with your pals. I say quick because its popularity in Kentish Town, means they have two sittings at lunch and dinner and if you don't want to eat ridiculously early or a slightly too late (week night) then you get just over an hour to wolf down your 'margarita' or more likely your 'Soppressata, tomato, burrata, black olives'. Yep, Pizza East likes to test your food knowledge, I didn't know what half those things were and had to ask for fear of getting something like a sneaky anchovy on mine. (One of the 5 things I really just can't stand). 

But it's the brunch that makes this place stand out. In the daylight, the restaurant loses its dimly lit moodiness and has a fresh, airy and fun feel. Everyone was lapping it up, from cute kids to a younger crowd nursing hangovers.

Green Eggs and Ham

I ordered the playfully named 'Green eggs and ham', the waiter got quizzed on that one too. It was   two perfectly poached eggs, one with the yellowest yoke I have ever seen perched on some wafer thin ham, on top of a hybrid bun of brioche and an english muffin. The green part was a side of perfectly dressed rocket and a drizzle of fresh pesto over the eggs. It was a great combination. The ham could have been too salty, the pesto overpowering and not fresh and the rocket dry and under dressed but this little dish hopped over all these hurdles. And it was a snip at £6.

My friend ordered avocados on toast. The thick slabs of granary bread were piled high with roughly scooped pieces of perfectly ripe avo, finished off with a squeeze of lemon juice and a drizzle of hot sauce.

Pizza East is great. The friendly staff keep their grin while you ask what everything is on the menu and it has that laid back feel I crave on a Sunday.
www.pizzaeastkentishtown.com

Spend a Sunday... Made in Camden

As the name suggests, Made in Camden is placed right in the heart of it all, inside the famous music venue, The Roundhouse. Staying true to their roots, Camden Town Brewery beer lines the bar and locals fill the tables. Made in Camden was made for Sunday brunch. We were nestled in a booth, which felt cosy despite the vast space. It was the perfect place to catch up with two friends while glugging back one of their delicious peach Bellinis.

Smoked salmon, scrmbled egg and avocado

I ordered scrambled eggs on toast with smoked salmon and avocado. This dish sounded delicious and when it came, it didn’t look bad either. I love a colourful dish. I quite liked the separation of the egg and salmon and the scrambled egg was lovely and smooth, perhaps slightly over seasoned considering how salty smoked salmon is. I presumed the avocado would be sliced and could have balanced the saltyness, but turned out to be a spread of  guacamole, which felt a bit lazy.

All that said I would definitely go back. Camden is a lively place to wonder around on a sunny Sunday and Made in Camden is a good spot for a coffee and a bite to eat. I loved the splashes of red everywhere and I’ve got my eye on their wooden bar stools with metal red legs. If the reviews on their website are anything to go by, there must be some better things hiding in that menu.

Red Bar Stools

GET YOUR OWN: At Rockett St George

£129 Red Metal Chair, Rockett St George